COURT IN TRANSITION: RELIGIOUS BACKGROUND; In Midcareer, A Turn to Faith To Fill a Void

By EDWARD WYATT and SIMON ROMERO; David D. Kirkpatrick contributed reporting from Washington for this article.

Published: October 5, 2005

By 1979, Harriet E. Miers, then in her mid-30's, had accomplished what some people take a lifetime to achieve. She was a partner at Locke Purnell Boren Laney & Neely, one of the most prestigious law firms in the South, with an office on the 35th floor of the Republic National Bank Tower in downtown Dallas.

But she still felt something was missing in her life, and it was after a series of long discussions -- rambling conversations about family and religion and other matters that typically stretched from early evening into the night -- with Nathan L. Hecht, a junior colleague at the law firm, that she made a decision that many of the people around her say changed her life.

''She decided that she wanted faith to be a bigger part of her life,'' Justice Hecht, who now serves on the Texas Supreme Court, said in an interview. ''One evening she called me to her office and said she was ready to make a commitment'' to accept Jesus Christ as her savior and be born again, he said. He walked down the hallway from his office to hers, and there amid the legal briefs and court papers, Ms. Miers and Justice Hecht ''prayed and talked,'' he said.

She was baptized not long after that, at the Valley View Christian Church.

It was a pivotal personal transformation for the woman now named for a seat on the United States Supreme Court, not entirely unlike that experienced by President Bush and others in the Texas political and business establishment of that time.

Ms. Miers, born Roman Catholic, became an evangelical Christian and began identifying more with Republicans than with the Democrats who had long held sway over Texas politics. She joined the missions committee of her church, which is against legalized abortion, and friends and colleagues say she rarely looked back at her past as a Democrat.

''There weren't that many Republicans in Texas in those days,'' said Merrie Spaeth, a director of media relations at the White House under Ronald Reagan who met Ms. Miers after moving to Dallas in 1985. ''Harriet is what you would call a Southern lady. It is marvelous to watch her in meetings with huge egos, where she allows people to think good results are the product of their own ideas.''

To persuade the right to embrace Ms. Miers's selection despite her lack of a clear record on social issues, representatives of the White House put Justice Hecht on at least one conference call with influential social conservative organizers on Monday to talk about her faith and character.

Some evangelical Protestants were heralding the possibility that one of their own would have a seat on the court after decades of complaining that their brand of Christianity met condescension and exclusion from the American establishment.

In an interview Tuesday on the televangelist Pat Robertson's ''700 Club,'' Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the Christian conservative American Center for Law and Justice, said Ms. Miers would be the first evangelical Protestant on the court since the 1930's. ''So this is a big opportunity for those of us who have a conviction, that share an evangelical faith in Christianity, to see someone with our positions put on the court,'' Mr. Sekulow said.

But other conservatives were unappeased, looking for someone with clearly stated public commitments on social issues like abortion.

While Ms. Miers rarely wore her religious thinking on her sleeve, her gradual tilt toward conservative views resulted in some uneasy moments when she took a break from a lucrative law practice and delved into politics with a campaign for the Dallas City Council in 1989, running for a nonpartisan post. She appeared as a candidate at the Dallas Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, but even though she said gays should have the same civil rights as others in society, she stopped short of endorsing a repeal of a Texas law criminalizing gay sexual activity.

Religion appears to have influenced her views on certain subjects. In a discussion with her campaign manager in 1989, Ms. Miers said she had been in favor in her younger years of a woman's right to have an abortion, but her views evolved against abortion, influenced largely by her born-again religious beliefs, said Lorlee Bartos, a Democratic campaign consultant in Dallas who managed Ms. Miers's City Council campaign.

''She was someone whose view had shifted, and she explained that to me,'' Ms. Bartos said.

Still, pragmatism, not ideology, seems to have guided Ms. Miers on most issues in her brief period in public office before she went on in 1995 to be named by Gov. George W. Bush to head the Texas State Lottery and then followed him to Washington.

One of the most controversial issues before the Dallas City Council during Ms. Miers's single term that ended in 1991 was a battle over whether the city should adopt a plan doing away with council members elected at large, an election method that minority groups in Dallas criticized as marginalizing them from municipal politics.

Ms. Miers, elected as an at-large council member, initially favored the at-large system, but her position evolved to support a proposal that would create a collection of different districts in the city. This was adopted and eventually led to greater representation of blacks and Hispanics in Dallas.